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The US President does not usually take advice, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and compliment the US president.

However, El Salvador's authoritarian leader Bukele has followed a distinct approach by urging the Trump administration to follow his example in removing so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted Bukele's demands to oust US judges.

Growing Risks to Judicial Independence

Analysts note that the leader's latest remarks come at a time of unprecedented dangers to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a period where the Trump administration is employing similar authoritarian methods employed by leaders in nations such as Turkey, the European state, the Asian nation, and Bukele's own the Central American country to undermine democratic accountability.

The president's online statement last week was just the latest in a long series of taunts and claims he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring assertion that the US was “facing a court takeover,” and his mockery of a federal judge's ruling to stop removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his country's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Federal Judge

Bukele's impeachment call was also issued during social media criticism on Oregon justice Judge Immergut by presidential advisor Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Elon Musk, and Trump personally in a latest press gaggle.

The judge had ordered injunctions blocking the administration from deploying the military reserves, initially in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to dispatch soldiers into the city, which the president has characterized as “battle-scarred” based on small, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's homeland security facility.

Record of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against Trump's executive orders or in other ways impeded the administration's policy goals. Before returning to power recently, Trump directed his supporters against judges presiding over his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with threats and abuse.

Watchdog organizations, law enforcement agencies, and judges themselves have pointed to a heightened atmosphere of risks and coercion in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

Based on data collected by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the third quarter, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred US justices, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is on track to exceed the previous year's high of 630 reported incidents.

The dangers are not just happening at the federal level. Information by Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine cases of threats, harassment, surveillance, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in 2025.

Analyst Insights on Root Causes

Experts state that the threats are a result of the rhetoric coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and allies coincide with escalating aggressive posts on social media.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent rise in demands for removal and violent threats against judges across digital networks from the first two months 2025, the initial period of the president's term.”

Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's threats against judges have certainly driven online vitriol at judges and calls for impeachment. Attacking the courts is one more step in the administration's march towards strongman rule.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been well-trodden in the past decade in several countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after commencing a second term despite constitutional prohibitions, the president's parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s top prosecutor and several judges on the supreme court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees selected by Bukele.

The action mirrored Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in Israel and the European country.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Analysts say that the threats and rhetorical attacks in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a system that provides no simple method for the president to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Meghan Leonard, an associate professor at Illinois State University who has researched democratic decline in democracies, said the White House had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

“The administration is looking around at these achievements and setbacks. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any laws that would weaken the judiciary,” she said.

Citing instances such as Miller’s relentless claims of nearly limitless executive power, she noted: “They directly attack the courts by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the discussion by repeating their argument that the executive has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is public trust in the legitimacy of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening trust in courts may make judges think twice about judgments that go against the current administration, which is, of course, massively problematic for court oversight and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, professor of social science and international affairs at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about escalating threats to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “harassment deliveries” recently, in which judges have received unsolicited food orders with the customer listed as a name, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the residence in 2020 by a assailant targeting the judge.

“All understands what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“US justices are guarded by the presidential protection and the federal police. And these are specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the federal agency. And the former AG has been spearheading the attacks on justices.”

Government Goals

On the government's aims, Scheppele said that “impeaching a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s very difficult to do. {Right now|Currently